Abstract
Attention can help an individual efficiently find a specific target among multiple distractors and is proposed to consist of three functions: alerting, orienting, and executive control. Action video games (AVGs) have been shown to enhance attention. However, whether AVG can affect the attentional functions across different modalities remains to be determined. In the present study, a group of action video game players (AVGPs) and a group of non-action video game players (NAVGPs) selected by a video game usage questionnaire successively participated in two tasks, including an attention network task-visual version (ANT-V) and an attention network task-auditory version (ANT-A). The results indicated that AVGPs showed an advantage in orienting under the effects of conflicting stimuli (executive control) in both tasks, and NAVGPs may have a reduced ability to disengage when conflict occurs in visual task, suggesting that the AVGs can improve guidance toward targets and inhibition of distractors with the function of executive control. AVGPs also showed more correlations among attentional functions. Importantly, the alerting functions of AVGPs in visual and auditory tasks were significantly related, indicating that the experience of AVGs could help us to generate a supramodal alerting effect across visual and auditory modalities.
Highlights
Some evidence has proven that playing violent video games is related to aggressive behaviors (Anderson et al, 2010; Prescott et al, 2018), the benefits of action video games (AVGs) on attention are one of the emerging fields for understanding their impact on child development (Granic et al, 2014), and researchers have further suggested that AVGs can influence mental health and education (Li and Tsai, 2013; Bavelier and Green, 2019)
The results described above showed that, in the visual modality, the correlation between alerting and conflict was stronger for action video game players (AVGPs), while the correlations between the functions of orienting and conflict were tighter for non-action video game players (NAVGPs)
The results described above showed that, in the auditory modality, the correlations between attentional functions were stronger for AVGPs than for NAVGPs
Summary
Some evidence has proven that playing violent video games is related to aggressive behaviors (Anderson et al, 2010; Prescott et al, 2018), the benefits of action video games (AVGs) on attention are one of the emerging fields for understanding their impact on child development (Granic et al, 2014), and researchers have further suggested that AVGs can influence mental health and education (Li and Tsai, 2013; Bavelier and Green, 2019). Attention refers to the process of selecting task-relevant stimuli and inhibiting task-irrelevant distractors, and it helps us to allocate the mental resources involved in a vast number of simultaneous inputs from visual, auditory and other sensory modalities. Attentional Functions of AVGPs ability to accomplish selective attention in the visual modality (Green and Bavelier, 2003; Feng et al, 2007; Dye et al, 2009; Xiang and Hu, 2010; Hubert-Wallander et al, 2011), as well as greater phonological decoding speed in the auditory modality (Sandro and Sara, 2018). The experience of AVGs can improve probabilistic inference in both visual and auditory tasks (Green et al, 2010), whether it can influence attention across modalities remains to be revealed. The influence of AVGs on the interactions among attentional functions remain unclear
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